Hmmmm, remind me to throw a big party when George Bush gets killed. An eye for an eye indeed.When Hyojin Jenny Hwang wrote on Facebook that she was saddened by the sight of young Americans like herself jubilantly cheering Osama bin Laden's death, the angry response was swift, even from friends.
"One friend told me she felt judged for feeling happy," said the 30-year-old mother from New Jersey. "And another one simply unfriended me on Facebook."
As the hours passed, though, and the initial giddiness settled a bit, Hwang, who says she feels strongly that a death should not be celebrated, received messages of support from people similarly unnerved by the scenes of euphoria. Those scenes have included chants of "USA! USA!" at the White House gates and ground zero; signs such as "Obama 1, Osama 0"; or T-shirts now available online, saying "GOT HIM!" and illustrated by a stick figure of a dead bin Laden.
It's one thing to be satisfied that the world's most wanted terrorist has been killed by a U.S. Navy SEAL unit in Pakistan. But where does satisfaction end and gloating begin? It's a question being posed online by ordinary Americans, religious figures, various commentators and several 9/11 widows. And it's bound to be on President Barack Obama's mind as he treads that fine line in a visit Thursday to ground zero.
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Kristen Breitweiser said they brought back images of bin Laden supporters celebrating in the streets on that infamous day in 2001.
"Forgive me, but I don't want to watch uncorked champagne spill onto hallowed ground where thousands were murdered in cold blood," she wrote Monday on The Huffington Post. "And it breaks my heart to witness young Americans cheer any death — even the death of a horrible, evil, murderous person — like it is some raucous tailgate party on a college campus. Why are we not somber?"
Another 9/11 widow, Marian Fontana, wrote on Salon of how her son, Aidan, who was 5 when his father died, had gone to school on Monday and called at lunchtime, wanting to come home.
"Everyone is talking about bin Laden. In every class, they are happy he is dead, but I don't feel happy," she said he told her.
And Deena Burnett Bailey, of Little Rock, Ark., who lost her husband Tom Burnett, said she was struggling with how to talk to her teens about bin Laden's death.
"To say that I'm happy that he was killed just seems odd, and it goes against my Christian faith," she said. "The girls and I were talking about it. ... One of them said, 'What can we say, Mom? We can't say praise the Lord, he's dead.' I said, 'I know. You just have to know that someone else made that decision, and that he will now stand before judgment for having killed so many people.'"
Online, some Americans said they saw absolutely nothing wrong with Sunday's outpouring.
"If you cannot cheer about the demise of a truly wicked man who took so much from us, what do you celebrate?" asked Edward Hannigan, 45, of Chico Hills, Calif., editor of an online music magazine, on Facebook. In another post, he added: "I'm damn happy he's dead. And on top of that, I hope it hurt. A lot."
But Donna Guhr, a waitress in Crestone, Colo., refused to cheer. "Out of ALL the people here in my town I've spoken with I only know two people who agree with the celebrating," she wrote, also on Facebook. "Gives me hope."
In a follow-up phone interview, Guhr, 44, said she was concerned about scenes of the jubilation inciting retaliatory attacks. "He had a lot of followers, and they're not getting any happier with us," she said of bin Laden.
She added that the celebrations made her recall a quote attributed to Gandhi: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
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